Fan Pu Zeng

Hello! I am Fan Pu. I recently graduated with a M.S (2023) and B.S (2022) in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

At CMU, I was actively involved in the open-source programming assignment auto-grading platform Autolab from 2018-2023. I served as the Masters Student Liaison for the Singapore Students Association. I also used to play Capture-The-Flag (CTF) competitions with PPP. I previously interned at Jane Street, Meta, Asana, and Saleswhale (acquired 2022). I was a TA for 10-708 Probabilistic Graphical Models in the Spring 2023 semester.

I am broadly interested in rigorously proving why machine learning techniques work and what guarantees we can extract out of them, borrowing tools from theoretical computer science and mathematics. My eventual goal is to build a startup in AI/ML using the things that I’ve learnt, for the betterment of humanity the world.

In my free time, I enjoy bouldering, K-pop dancing, running, reading and learning new things, writing things for my blog, and watching anime. I used to do sprint canoe competitively. If I have an extended break I enjoy traveling, especially hiking and exploring the great outdoors. Most of the banner pictures on my blog posts were taken during these hikes. My favorite classroom in CMU is GHC 4303.

I grew up in my hometown Singapore before moving to the US for college and work. I try to go back and visit once a year.

Feel free to reach out to me at fzeng[at]alumni[dot]cmu[dot]edu. I am happy to chat and share any of my experiences. Unfortunately, I am unable to provide referrals for people that I have not worked with as I cannot write a strong recommendation, without which it is almost always an instant rejection.

I have a Technician amateur radio license, and my callsign is KC3UFE.

This blog was originally started on 24 June 2018, although it has taken many forms since then. I write about things that I find interesting, and which might be helpful for other people, with the goal that people learn something new when they read them. I try to have my posts reviewed by friends who are knowledgeable in an area whenever possible to ensure that what is presented is factually accurate. Do let me know if you have any article suggestions. All banner pictures on the blog are taken by yours truly!

Starred Blog Posts

Some of my more popular posts that might be of interest:

General

• The Art of LaTeX: Common Mistakes, and Advice for Typesetting Beautiful, Delightful Proofs
• Against Government Scholarships
• Notes On Founding A Startup To My Future Self

CMU

• CMU 15-712 Advanced Operating Systems and Distributed Systems Course Review
• CMU 15-441/641 Computer Networks Course Review
• My Sharing at the Hwa Chong Undergrad Alumni Forum, i.e. why study Computer Science at CMU

Technical Posts

• (Paper Summary) The Implicit Bias of Gradient Descent on Separable Data
• A Unified Framework for High-Dimensional Analysis of M-Estimators with Decomposable Regularizers: A Guided Walkthrough
• Score-Based Diffusion Models
• The Delightful Consequences of the Graph Minor Theorem
• Universal types, and your type checker doesn’t suck as much as you think